"It's something I'm very proud of," Trump said of the historically low black unemployment rate during his first State of the Union address Tuesday.

President Trump has spent this week boasting about African-American unemployment being at the lowest "rate ever recorded."

"It's something I'm very proud of," he said during his first State of the Union address Tuesday.

Speaking at a Republican retreat two days later, Trump blasted Democrats for not applauding or celebrating his SOTU remark, complaining, "You would've thought that on that one, they would've sort of at least clapped a little bit."

But Democrats have refused to credit Trump for the statistical feat because they say his policies have nothing to do with it, countering that black unemployment has been on a steady decline for years. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics seemingly confirmed that Democratic argument, putting out data showing that the black unemployment rate spiked by 0.9% last month.

That hike — from 6.8% to 7.7% — comes after black unemployment plummeted to the lowest point in history in December after having been slashed nearly in half during President Obama's second term.

While 0.9% is a major increase, it does not mean that the African-American community has suddenly been thrust into an unemployment crisis. What the jump does suggest, however, is that neither Trump nor his policies have anything to do with the black unemployment rate being at a record low.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Department of Labor, released statistics showing that black unemployment spiked by 0.9% last month.

(Public Domain)

Employment statistics are susceptible to unpredictable shifts, and it takes years before the effects of any given president's economic policies can be discerned.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump cherry-picked some other newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics data. He declared that the GOP tax plan, which went into effect last month, was to thank for the overall unemployment rate being at 4.1%, average earnings being up by 2.9% since last January, and 200,000 new jobs having been created last month.